Me to, or crayons 
I’m 31 and we had my grandfather’s ink blotter in the house. But I’d also probably have picked up the idea from all the Victorian literature lying around otherwise.
Also, Dad always called the radio the ‘wireless’, which used to get odd looks from the younger people.
Technically they’re not the same thing but the term is pretty much interchangeable between the two. An ink blotter is something hand-held and small that you’d just use to run over a signature on something, whereas the desk blotter is something you’d be more likely to use to blot an entire sheet of paper.
I’m 50. I remember mimeographs. In fact, I went to class with the son of the school’s secretary and got to turn the crank on the machine a couple of times. And I remember 78 rpm records. And 45’s. I had a changer that only played 45’s, in fact. I remember when our TV had knobs and only a VHF tuner. We had an antenna on the roof with a rotor that aimed it in different directions for picking up the strongest signal. I remember IBM cards. I remember manual typewriters. And I remember dial telephones. I have never used an ink blotter, however. Even 40 years ago, ball-point pens were common when I went to school. Fountain pens were pretty much of a curiosity.
My grandmother always called automobiles “machines” and the telephone was referred to as the “ameche” because Don Ameche played Edison in a movie.
Do you remember when stereos (record players) had four speeds - 78,45,33 and 1/3 and 16 and 2/3? I never saw a record designed for 16 and 2/3 but we had 78’s in our house.
does anyone remember what a “pony” is and do kids still use them today?
Not that old – I’m 41, on the older edge of Generation X, but there’s a lot of things from my youth that either aren’t around now, or are quite rare. A few:
- Mucilage.
- Letraset, Zip-a-Tone and Chartpak.
- Leroy lettering sets.
- China pencils.
- Planimeters.
- Gestetner machines.
My parents used a lot of obsolete terms for everyday products, that left me going “huh?” A few off the top of my head:
- Safety (condom)
- Oleo (margerine)
Five minute edit window - damn!
My parents also call DVDs and CDs “tapes”. A few other terms that they use:
Carfare = bus fare, train fare
Casino = nightclub (In the 1940s, Buffalo had tens of prominent bars and nightclubs that were named “[Something] Casino”)
Hassock = footstool
Car phone = cell phone
Up until I was a teenager, they sometimes called Kmart “Kresge’s”.
Okay, I’ve used blotting paper.
I’ve seen those rocking blotter things, but never actually used one. Do they come ready to use straight out of the box? Or are you supposed to attach a bit of blotting paper to it first?
I occasionally slip up and refer to the refrigerator as the “icebox”. (I was 10 when we got our first refrigerator.)
When I was a mere articled clerk, my principal, then in his seventies, had a rocking blotter on his desk.
After one conference, as we went back to our little mouseholes under the rafters, my fellow articled clerk, a year or two my junior, said 'What the heck is that thing on his desk?"
I explained. She asked me how I knew. I said, “Oh, from reading Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie.”
“Ah, that explains it,” she said. “I specialised in post-modern feminist lit.”
See post 29:
The reason for the blotting rocker was that ink for fountain pens used to be slow-drying. This could cause delays if you wrote a letter and wanted to post it quickly. You couldn’t fold it, or pick it up at an angle, because the ink would run or smear. So you just had to sit there and wait for the ink to dry.
Fortunately, the inventive boffins in the high-tech world of fountain pens came up with quick-drying ink, so that nowadays, none of us need to use a blotter once we sign our names without fountain pens. The march of progress… For more on the amount of technology that has gone into the development of fountain pens, see this article by Unca Cecil: What are the “fins” on a fountain pen for?
Actually, the slow-drying ink was a feature, not a bug.
Back before there were type-writers and carbon paper, Bartleby the Scivener would write out the letter for the solicitor in his fine copper-plate, using slow-drying ink. Bartleby would then carefully put the letter into the letterpress, and load the top of the letterpress with a sheet of onionskin paper. He would then gradually lower the top of the letterpress down onto the original, pressing the onionskin against the original. Some of the ink would transfer onto the onionskin, and then Bartleby would take it out. It would be a reverse image, of course, but because onionskin is so fine, he could just turn it over and it would be legible, albeit a bit blurry. Now Bartleby would have a copy of the letter for the solicitor’s file. If the ink didn’t dry too quickly, he could take more than one copy that way.
At the end of the day, Bartleby would take all of his work into the solicitor’s office. It would all be dry by now, because of the letterpress taking up excess ink, and the mere passage of time. So Bartleby gives it all to the solicitor, who signs the day’s correspondence. He just needs to blot his own signature, so he uses the rocking blotter, gives it all back to Bartleby, and says, “Now post it all, Bartleby.” At which point Bartleby chooses not to.
I think I want to bear your babies. :o
Wasn’t that actually a Gestetner? The mimeos were the double-sheets, ones with purple compound (or occasionally green), as described by FatBaldGuy, supra.
The difference was that a Gestetner sheet could be used more than once, since the ink was on the machine. Once you’d made the copies, you could take the Gestetner master off the machine and put it in a Manila folder (but that’s another thread ). As long as the Gestetner didn’t tear, you could re-use it.
Since the active compound in mimeos was actually on the back of the mimeo sheet, it would wear off after one or two uses.
In my school, mimeos were used for one-shot deals, like exams, while Gestetners were used for documents that needed to be printed more than once, like the constitution of the student council, which was printed out every year for the new members of council.
And I remember sitting my first exam at university, being baffled by the technology used for the exam paper. It wasn’t purple or green, so it wasn’t a mimeo. It was black, but it didn’t have that Gestetner smell and smear. The lettering was so crisp, it was almost like … someone had photographed the original and made a copy some how… I gave up trying to figure it out, and started writing my answers, but I knew I was in the big leagues…
I’m 27. I know what a desk blotter is. I know what an ink blotter is, and I even own one. I also own a fountain pen (and use it sometimes). I also own a couple of nib pens and have used them, sometimes for art classes and sometimes just for a laugh. The only thing from Agatha Christie that has me stumped are blotting books. What is a blotting book? Please someone answer.
I also remember, from my childhood, mimeograph machines, records and turntables, reverse-polish calculators, slide rules, black and white televisions, televisions with knobs, pressure cookers, film strips, and tape drives.
Do I win a prize?
Ink blotters were very popular advertising giveaways, particularly with financial institutions, life insurance and like service industries back in the 20s-50s (not co-incidentally the heyday of the cheap resevoir fountain pen!)
There were a lot of patriotic ones during the Second World War as well–I have a number of these with Victory Bond ads, or US/UK military rank comparison charts on them. Cheap and cheerful to produce. I have also seen relatively mild “cheesecake” blotters.
Those semi-circular “roller” things usually came with a desk set, and would hold a piece of (removable) blotting paper. Did exactly the same job as the flat piece of blotting paper, but with the extra mechanical purchace, and the added bureauratic satisfaction of the pseudo-rubberstamp effect. A nice little added ritual for the deskbound Babbit.
We’ve been watching Alfred Hitchcok Presents on DVD (great fun, BTW). Just last night, there was an episode where the Murderess fakes her husband’s signature using a fountain pen, then has to quickly blot the ink so that she can show the fake letter to the guy ringing the doorbell to be let in.
I remember when I was a kid (in the 70s), I got my hands on some paperbacks of “Peanuts” cartoons that had been originally published back in probably the '50s, from the very beginning of the strip. There was an ongoing joke that when Charlie Brown would try to write, he would get ink smeared all over the paper and all over himself. It took me years to figure out that he had been using a fountain pen! I could NOT understand how he got ballpoint ink smeared all over the place, and that was the only kind of pen I had ever seen!
My bro managed to ruin quite a few shirt pockets with a ballpoint! Somehow he always had pens “explode” all over himself.